Stability of the contralateral temporomandibular joint disk position after disk repositioning on one side

Abstract

To evaluate the stability of the contralateral temporomandibular joint disk position after disk repositioning on 1 side. Patients with unilateral anterior disk displacement (ADD) treated by disk repositioning from 2015 to 2019 were included in the study. The contralateral disk status was classified as follows: normal, ADD with reduction (ADDwR), and medial/lateral displacement. At 1-year follow-up, changes in the contralateral disk position were evaluated by MRI. Two hundred thirty-four patients were included in the study. There were 84 disks with normal position, 51 with ADDwR, and 99 with medial/lateral displacement (M/LD) in the contralateral joint. At 1-year follow-up, all the repositioned disks were stable without relapse. In the contralateral joints, 75% of the disks with normal position were unchanged compared with 43.1% of the ADDwR and 54.5% of the M/LD. ADDwR had the highest rate of changing to ADDwoR compared with the disks in normal position (4.8%) and M/LD (7.1%, χ2=16.13, P < .001). There were 28.3% of M/LD disks and 3.9% of ADDwR that changed to normal position. After unilateral disk repositioning, most of the contralateral disks with normal position were stable. M/LD disks tended to move to normal position, whereas ADDwR was largely changed to ADDwoR.